I’m on vacation but I have an inspiration for a post so I’m writing this from Berkeley, California.

Arline Klatte & Beth Lisick

Seven years ago Beth Lisick and Arline Klatte invited six people from different backgrounds to tell ten-minute true stories at a San Francisco club.  Porchlight Storytelling was successful from the start, attracting a diverse Bay Area audience and storytellers from hipsters to dotcom execs.  I went to a show about 6 years ago and loved it so much that I imported the model to Tucson.

Writer/performer Beth (disclaimer, she’s my daughter-in-law) told me about the beginnings of Porchlight.  She was invited to tell a story at The Moth, the New York City storytelling event that came to San Francisco for a show, and a club owner suggested that she start a storytelling event in San Francisco.  Since she was involved in the poetry slam community where it was common to start new events, she decided to just do it.

Beth and Arline are easygoing hosts at this popular monthly event that attracts hundreds of people.  They’re a good team because they have different connections so they can feature a diverse group of storytellers.

Although it’s difficult to get everyone together for a rehearsal, Beth says it makes a better and more cohesive show when all the storytellers can hear each other’s story and get and give feedback.

Mostly the stories are well received but they did have an unpleasant surprise once when a volunteer from the audience told an unrehearsed story that turned out to be racist.  When Arline and Beth returned to the stage they weren’t sure how to handle it so they announced that they don’t agree with the views and opinion of all the storytellers.

After six years of running the event on their own, Porchlight was picked up for sponsorship by Friends of the San Francisco Library.  Beth and Arline are branching out into teaching and will be presenting a four-week workshops at Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco.

Beth, besides being a published author, is half of the comedy duo Groomed for Success with Tara Jepsen, and she’s working on another book.

I just watched Around the World in 72 Days, an American Experience DVD about journalist Nellie Bly.  She is most famous for an undercover exposé in which she faked insanity to report about the conditions inside a mental hospital and for her record-breaking trip around the world. The time was the 1880′s and she had to fight for the right to be published alongside male reporters.

She taught herself the art of self promotion and constantly struggled to keep her name on the front page with strange and difficult escapades, doing things that women just didn’t do in those times.  She needed to pay the bills.

When I switched off the DVD, the TV came on and there was a PBS show on Amelia Earhart in the 1920′s, smiling at the camera, climbing into airplanes in trousers and a leather jacket and generally looking very dashing.  She knew how to use the media to promote her various stunts and achievements and was regularly featured in newsreels and newspapers. The novelty of a woman aviator had captured the imagination of the public.

She needed to keep her image vital so that she could pay the bills.

Seems to be a thread here.  Journalists, adventurers and performers all need an audience to be able to practice their art and they need to produce revenue in order to continue.

Recently there was an article in the NY Times about how performers have used The Moth Storytelling Slams as a jumping off point to further their careers.  Being seen in a popular event is a good way to prop up their reputations.

I Googled self promotion and came up with more than 14 million references.  Networking and blowing your own horn is a legitimate business strategy and face it, artists are in the business of getting  their work out there.   Because, after all, artists have to pay their bills.

Have you ever been to a spoken word or performance art event where there was no jurying and appeared to be no criteria for what constituted an acceptable presentation?  Like an open mic where anyone can have their five minutes of fame or the event formerly known as 7-Up where anyone can volunteer to take the spotlight and present what they are interested in.  They can be pretty exciting!  You never know what to expect and you can make some amazing discoveries.

On the other hand, it’s possible to sit through some pretty painful performances so a measure of control seems to make the audience’s experience smoother.

There’s a philosophical difference in these two approaches that seems to divide spoken word into two camps.  I’ve recently had an email discussion with Traci Moore, the editor of Monsoon Voices, the Live Literary Magazine.  Her method is to have people submit their stories just as they would with a print or online magazine.  She edits just as an editor would and that give her some assurance that the end product – the performance – will be up her standards.  As she says, “the selections we make are based on the quality of the writing/music and whether the content fits with our guidelines/mission.”

I was on the other side of the debate (well not entirely because we do have a theme and a rehearsal for Odyssey Storytelling.) My idea is to get as many diverse people on stage as possible and let the audience possibly suffer through a not-very-good story in exchange for hearing some spectacular ones. At the very least, they are learning about other peoples life experiences that may be very different than their own.

It always amazes me that when I do my informal poll at the end of a show on “which story and storyteller did you like the best / didn’t like at all”, I get a different answer from everyone.  The ones I thought were questionable always have a defender – someone who the story touched.   The ones I thought were clever and well done always have their detractors.  That’s what keeps it interesting to me.  I can never predict the impact of the event.

Do you like to be surprised or do you like to know that there will be a predictable level of skill and talent?